Nikita Nelin

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The Obligatory Bio in the 3rd-person:

Nikita Nelin was born in Moscow, Russia and immigrated to the U.S in 1989. He has lived in Austria and Italy, and has traveled the U.S extensively. He received the Sean O’Faolain prize for short fiction, the Summer Literary Seminars prize for nonfiction, and the Dogwood Literary Prize in Nonfiction, as well as being chosen as a finalist for the Restless Books Immigrant prize and the Dzanc Books prize. His work has been published in print and online. Nikita has conducted research through the Harriman Institute as well as translation through Yale Press, and has written on the convergence between fringe and at-large cultural trends for the Hannah Arendt Center. He holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, is a 2019 Associate Fellow at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, and is a member of the Southern Experience Collective.

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03/30/20 Detention

April 02, 2020 / Nikita Nelin

I remember sitting in detention

when I was little

for one accident of imagination or another

often,

though I rarely went

preferring instead to jump a gate,

steal a book,

bounce a basketball in the park

by myself

dreaming

of when I would be rescued from the simple architecture

of failed dreamers,

sleeping in backseats of cars

without a care in my heart

when somewhere a bell rang

signaling another meeting

in the woods

where no one was allowed to look at the trees or talk back to the sun.

That’s what I remember about detention –

all the ways a mind has

to break free and travel

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